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The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Jack by the hedge said:
Yeah, and I bet his screen door isn't even painted the same colours as the Estonia either. What an poor analogy.

You're right about the not being funny bit, though. Deliberately missing the point by a country mile is just tedious.
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To be honest, I do feel a bit of guilt. I don't have a screen door that bangs in the wind. All my screen doors latch snugly. But I don't think that really is the point, though Vixen might well try and make it the point and make me out as a liar. Guess we'll see.
 
JayUtah said:
Stop deflecting. You're describing a conspiracy to deceive the public. That's a conspiracy theory. Why do you have such a hard time calling something what it is?
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YOU think it is a conspiracy theory because you just can't believe the establishment would call a thing 'classified' to avert public disapproval, disguised as 'protecting national security'.

Well Sweden did come clean about its smuggling activities in Sept 1994 - albeit in 2005, then years later - so there is a real chance it will come clean about the events surrounding the Estonia and the hole in the starboard. It is vanishingly unlikely that it didn't know about it all along.
 
Vixen said:
We can pretend they do not fulfil your exact criteria or we can be intellectually honest and admit these passengers experienced something out of the ordinary that the JAIC did not investigate further.
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They experienced something out of the ordinary. It was something that not one of them aboard, crew included had any experience of unless you can show any of them were on a sinking ship previous to this event.

Not one person aboard had any experience of a ship being rammed or an explosion on a ship.
 
JayUtah said:
I remember being under the chain locker once when the anchor was let go. I would have sworn the world was ending.
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By all accounts being aboard a Battleship shooting a full broadside from the main guns is a similar experience.
 
Reformed Offlian said:
They are the translations you presented to us. As far as your audience need be concerned, they are the basis for your argument as they appear, and may be treated as such. I've already pointed out that looking at the original language doesn't seem to reveal additional indications that the passengers concluded or insinuated explosions. Rather than complain about "word games", why don't you make a stronger case that the witnesses reported explosions.



There is if you're suggesting that they reported explosions.
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A 'bang' can mean almost anything but usually refers to a sudden alarming sound. The bang of a firework is very different from the bang of someone applying dynamite to a quarry of rocks. However, I think we all understand that when someone says in an eyewitness account they heard a loud bang followed by an extremely loud bang, together with lurches, crashes and shuddering, they are not referring to the front door slamming.



As I said 34 passenger survivors in their eyewitness accounts (out of just 79 of them out of 900) described sensations of explosions/bangs/crashes and collisions. Different people use different words. And this is as we should expect.

THAT TRIP became the last of five to Hakanpää.
- I was at a karaoke bar with a friend when I heard an unusual sound. I thought it sounded like an explosion. I left immediately. It was a matter of seconds or minutes to get out. That ship collapsed so quickly and no one came to help.
Altti Hakanpää and his friend tried to shout at people. The sight still troubles him.
- We shouted to others that come, let's go. Now things are badly wrong. People sat in shock, holding on to what they were getting. The orchestra's tricks and the ship's wine bottles collapsed. There were only two options, to leave or to stay. The people in shock shouted the Lord God, some did not react in any way, they were completely locked.
- We tried to get people with us, but we don't get a shocked person anywhere. It left a bad mood, Hakanpää calms down.
Memories shatter for a moment. Those memories are so powerful that they are best understood by one who has been in a similar situation, fighting for life.
- Fortunately, there were no traffic jams on the stairs. Fortunately, I haven’t had to think about it afterwards, when it’s clear that on the congested stairs, the biggest ones have gone over the smaller ones.
- You got out of the seventh deck. Fortunately, the door opened inward. I climbed up along the wires and ropes. The ship was already tilted badly. Today I wouldn’t be able to climb anymore, but then I was younger.
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- Ilta-Sanomat, 2018

Obviously, Hakanpää hasn't got a clue what he is talking about.
 
Vixen said:
How did I guess that you would come back with these word games? You have been told that they are English translations of the original. There is no requirement for eyewitnesses to use the specific word 'explosion' in their eye witness accounts. The public, being largely honest, will not claim they experienced 'a bomb going off' if they did not actually see it or had it confirmed and of course will describe it to the best of their ability as how it felt and what the noise sounded like.

Stop playing semantics phiwum and admit that these passenger survivors shared a common experience compatible with a collision ( being thrown ) feeling vibrations and shudders, and hearing a series of bangs/crashes/collisions compatible with a visceral experience of a series of blasts followed by a crash.

We can pretend they do not fulfil your exact criteria or we can be intellectually honest and admit these passengers experienced something out of the ordinary that the JAIC did not investigate further.
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Oh, yes, most of these reports are compatible with an explosion. But that's not what you've been claiming. You've been claiming that several people heard an explosion, but they didn't say so. So how do you know they heard an explosion?

For instance,
Vixen said:
All I know is that some survivors claim to have heard explosions - in fact a series of them
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But that's not in evidence. You haven't cited any source for a single person claiming to have heard explosions. You've cited summaries reporting bangs and even scraping sounds.

So, you should admit that all you have is summaries of testimony consistent with explosions (some of them anyway), but literally no evidence that anyone claimed to have heard an explosion.

And then you can admit that these same testimonies are consistent with the bow visor explanation, least as far as I can tell, and some fit better. (I think the bow visor falling off could scrape the hull as it fell, but explosions do not make scraping sounds far as I know.) Though we must both admit that we're fairly ignorant of what sounds a failing bow visor might make.
 
Vixen said:
Yes, let's just completely ignore them. After all, the public are a thick bunch. Who needs their eyewitness accounts in an accident that killed almost a thousand of their peers, including a baby of 2 months? Too stupid, by half.
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What are we ignoring? Many folks heard loud noises. None claimed to have heard an explosion (though one said she heard a sound like an explosion).

You are being disrespectful by putting words in their mouths. I would be disrespectful if I said any of them reported hearing the bow visor falling from the ship, because they didn't. They heard loud noises of various descriptions. Only one person likened the loud noise to an explosion.
 
Vixen said:
A 'bang' can mean almost anything but usually refers to a sudden alarming sound. The bang of a firework is very different from the bang of someone applying dynamite to a quarry of rocks. However, I think we all understand that when someone says in an eyewitness account they heard a loud bang followed by an extremely loud bang, together with lurches, crashes and shuddering, they are not referring to the front door slamming.
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Oh, for ****'s sake, the screen door was merely to illustrate different uses of the word "bang". I don't doubt that the passengers were reporting a much more significant noise.

But I do doubt that they claimed to have heard an explosion, since they never said so (aside from one who likened the sound to an explosion).
 
Vixen said:
You and Captain_Swoop are welcome to gaslight me. However do stop and consider whether it is nice to downplay the lived experiences of the Estonia survivors.
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Emotionally-laden deflection. You're trying to shame people away from questioning your rewriting of the evidence.
 
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Vixen said:
You and Captain_Swoop are welcome to gaslight me. However do stop and consider whether it is nice to downplay the lived experiences of the Estonia survivors.
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... Or to twist their words to appeal to us that so many of them reported explosions and collisions when you previously offered us 1 of the former and 2 of the latter.
 
I don't understand why people who hold unconventional opinions (to be charitable) are so confident in their ability to twist words to try and say what they mean like it isn't obvious that's what they are doing.

None of them said explosions, they said bangs. Bangs could be explosions, sure, but they could also be any number of other things. Asserting they described explosions until you're blue in the face isn't going to change the actual statements they made, and it's especially ridiculous to link to said statements that transparently do not say what you're trying to claim they say.

Equally the accusation of gaslighting is hilarious because two people with relevant experience and expertise are disputing the unevidenced conclusions made by people with no relevant expertise. This is somehow disrespecting the survivors because...reasons.

Look, let's say I interviewed survivors of 9/11 and some of them said they heard sounds like great big bangs one after another, and then they opined that they thought these sounds were bombs going off (which is actually markedly more than the survivors you are quoting are even claiming but I digress). Would it be insulting them to state that while their experience was real, and I fully believed that they heard said noises that they were categorically not bombs?
 
phiwum said:
What are we ignoring? Many folks heard loud noises. None claimed to have heard an explosion (though one said she heard a sound like an explosion).

You are being disrespectful by putting words in their mouths. I would be disrespectful if I said any of them reported hearing the bow visor falling from the ship, because they didn't. They heard loud noises of various descriptions. Only one person likened the loud noise to an explosion.
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Let's compare and contrast to a similar accident with the Herald of Free Enterprise some eight years before. What do the eye witness survivors say there?

had to get some duty-free and I was queuing at the perfume counter when it became clear that something was beginning to go wrong.

The ship jolted - quite violently, but it didn't seem significant enough to raise any fears at that particular moment.

But then within a few seconds there was a second much more violent jolt and the ship literally tipped over as if you were knocking over a glass of water - it seemed that quick.

'Horrific sights'

I was thrown onto my back and I slid down the floor of the lounge.

I came to a halt on the front of the bar - which as the ship had capsized had gone from vertical to horizontal.

So I was actually standing upright before the water started coming into the ship.

By this stage the lights were still on and I saw some horrific sights.

People were falling from one side of the ship to the other - somersaulting down.


The water burst though the portholes and the deck doors - I was absolutely terrified

Bottles of perfume and whisky were flying around - nothing appeared to have been bolted down.

You can imagine what it was like turning something that size over - all the debris was crashing around about my ears as I stood there.

And then I saw the water burst though the portholes and the deck doors.

I was absolutely terrified.

By this stage all the lights had gone out and I felt the freezing cold water hit my legs and I floated up with it.

'Unbelievable noise'

I was fairly convinced the ship was going to sink and I'd be trapped and almost certainly perish.

But that feeling only lasted until it became clear the ship finally - luckily - came to rest on a sandbank.

The noise was horrendous from start to finish - a terrible, unbelievable, metallic grinding noise, breaking glass and the screams of people who were injured, falling or terrified.
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Simon Osborne, BBC News


Simon Osborne mentions a 'violent jolt, terrible unbelievable noise, metallic grinding, breaking glass].

Soldier Jim Garvey:

Soldier Jim Garvey said,

“It started very slowly. Plates started to slip across the tables. Everyone began to joke about it and waited for the plates to slide back. Then suddenly there was an almighty crash as a pile of plates fell to the floor in the kitchen. Some thought it was a big wave and some people clapped. The ship rolled back and then rolled over to the opposite side, slow at first, then it suddenly accelerated like a wire had been cut. Flickering lights went out and there was a huge screeching noise. No one had a chance.”

<snip>

Lynette Carvley was sitting with her family and wheelchair-bound Nora Woodhouse in the cafeteria.

“The ferry listed suddenly and very briefly and everything fell off the tables and wheelchairs began to move. There was this poor old lady hurtling down the aisle in her wheelchair. My mum got up and put out her arm to try to stop her but the force just carried both of them down through a glass wall where the water was gushing in. She was whisked away. She disappeared in this great mass of water…

I remember holding onto the table. It took every ounce of strength and more, as things were being sucked out and flying through the air at a speed of what seemed to be hundreds of miles an hour. We were trapped under the glass partitioning, which then became the roof of the cafeteria. The water was filling up, I can’t swim but I didn’t start to panic. I was trying to hold on to something metal at the side of me, and push myself out of the rising water. I went under the water for what seemed ages, but my daughter Rebecca pulled me up, as she was a good swimmer.”
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Herald of Free Enterprise - Great Disasters

The Herald of Free Enterprise is pretty much identical to the Estonia in that its car deck was flooded with water, after a boatswain went to sleep in his cabin without checking the car ramp was locked.

I looked for an account that mentioned the same 'bangs' and feelings of collisions but all there was were straight forward accounts of being flung across a room because of a violent list or jolt. IOW survivors were able to relate experiences consistent with sudden flooding and listing. Apart from the 'terrible noise' as reported by Osborne, this seems to refer to the sound of glass breaking and the generally melée, together with a grinding noise as the ship turned onto a bank.

Nobody mentions a 'bang' or even a series of 'bangs' as the Estonia survivors do.
 
Vixen said:
The Herald of Free Enterprise is pretty much identical to the Estonia in that its car deck was flooded with water, after a boatswain went to sleep in his cabin without checking the car ramp was locked.
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... as opposed to its bow doors being smashed loose in a storm.

I looked for an account that mentioned the same 'bangs' and feelings of collisions but all there was were straight forward accounts of being flung across a room because of a violent list or jolt. IOW survivors were able to relate experiences consistent with sudden flooding and listing. Apart from the 'terrible noise' as reported by Osborne, this seems to refer to the sound of glass breaking and the generally melée, together with a grinding noise as the ship turned onto a bank.

Nobody mentions a 'bang' or even a series of 'bangs' as the Estonia survivors do.
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How odd. I wonder if that's anything to do with the Herald not having its bow doors smashed off in a storm.
 
Vixen said:
Let's compare and contrast to a similar accident with the Herald of Free Enterprise some eight years before. What do the eye witness survivors say there?

Simon Osborne, BBC News


Simon Osborne mentions a 'violent jolt, terrible unbelievable noise, metallic grinding, breaking glass].

Soldier Jim Garvey:

Herald of Free Enterprise - Great Disasters

The Herald of Free Enterprise is pretty much identical to the Estonia in that its car deck was flooded with water, after a boatswain went to sleep in his cabin without checking the car ramp was locked.

I looked for an account that mentioned the same 'bangs' and feelings of collisions but all there was were straight forward accounts of being flung across a room because of a violent list or jolt. IOW survivors were able to relate experiences consistent with sudden flooding and listing. Apart from the 'terrible noise' as reported by Osborne, this seems to refer to the sound of glass breaking and the generally melée, together with a grinding noise as the ship turned onto a bank.

Nobody mentions a 'bang' or even a series of 'bangs' as the Estonia survivors do.
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Okay, nobody mentions bangs.

So, how does that imply that every time an Estonia passenger mentions a bang, they mean an explosion?

Keep your eye on the ball there, Vixen. You're not trying to prove that Estonia has different reports than the Herald. You're trying to prove that lots of people reported hearing explosions when we have evidence of only one person kinda sorta saying she heard an explosion. You have to tell us why in this case, every report of a bang is an explosion. And, I guess, some reports of scraping noises are also about explosions.

And then you can tell us how every report of a bang is a collision too or something, but we can just focus on explosions for now.

"All I know is that some survivors claim to have heard explosions - in fact a series of them"
 
MarkCorrigan said:
I don't understand why people who hold unconventional opinions (to be charitable) are so confident in their ability to twist words to try and say what they mean like it isn't obvious that's what they are doing.

None of them said explosions, they said bangs. Bangs could be explosions, sure, but they could also be any number of other things. Asserting they described explosions until you're blue in the face isn't going to change the actual statements they made, and it's especially ridiculous to link to said statements that transparently do not say what you're trying to claim they say.

Equally the accusation of gaslighting is hilarious because two people with relevant experience and expertise are disputing the unevidenced conclusions made by people with no relevant expertise. This is somehow disrespecting the survivors because...reasons.

Look, let's say I interviewed survivors of 9/11 and some of them said they heard sounds like great big bangs one after another, and then they opined that they thought these sounds were bombs going off (which is actually markedly more than the survivors you are quoting are even claiming but I digress). Would it be insulting them to state that while their experience was real, and I fully believed that they heard said noises that they were categorically not bombs?
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That would be hindsight. However, if you took down witness statements immediately after the 9/11 thing happened, of course witnesses are going to report a whole range of things. If someone believed it had been a bomb going off then that is how they perceived it. I cannot understand why anybody would want to censor that account. OK so we know it was erroneous but it doesn't follow it should be binned. It may still be useful in getting an idea of what it was like for those people at ground level when the planes hit. We get an idea of the volume of sound and the visceral experience. The purpose of an eye witness is not to prove or disprove an incident. It gives us a picture in the eyewitness' own words of what he or she saw and heard.

Not sure why this bothers anyone.
 
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